Maria
by nelliel3
Summary: This is the story of how Tony's mom died, and how it still affects him today. Very sad, rated teen for brief violence and thoughts of suicide  also brief . Please read/rate. ***Do not own Iron Man Armored Adventures, characters anything of the sort****


**Maria**

******AUTHOR'S NOTE okay, so first i'd like to say, this is my first post, so i don't exactly know how this will turn out. I wrote all of this like a one shot because that was what it was intended to be, but once i started writing, i couldn't stop so it ended up REALLY long. If it seems too long to just be a one shot then i'll just put it into chapters, but it will read like a one shot (did that make any sense). Second, I noticed that no one really seemed to be taking an interest in Tony's mom. This is me, taking an interest in Tony's mom. I dubbed her Maria because that named just seemed to fit, not to mention I'd seen it in a couple of your stories. So yeah, please comment and i hope you enjoy!**********

Tony walked into his room to find Pepper standing next to his bed and holding a picture frame. She was being uncharacteristically quiet and still. He looked at the open drawer on his nightstand and suddenly knew exactly what she had found.

_Flashback_

"_Come on Tony. We don't want to be late!" The pretty woman said to her seven year old son._

"_Mom, I told you, I don't like being called Tony! That's a baby name." The boy replied as a pout slid over his face. His mother had to stop herself from laughing at him. For some odd reason, Tony had recently decided that he no longer wished to be called Tony. It was very sudden. He had been called Tony his entire life, and never once complained. It piqued her curiosity, but she figured that 'a baby name' was as good as she was going to get as far as explinations go._

"_Alright, come on Anthony. We don't want to be late!" His mother repeated. The boy grinned._

"_Okay!" He called and ran to his mother. She ruffled his messy black hair, which was the exact same color as her own._

_Howard walked in, struggling with his undone tie. "Hey, Maria, do you think…" he stopped talking when his hand got stuck in the knot he was attempting to tie. Suppressing a laugh, his wife walked over and did it for him. He gave in and let his wife handle it. She was much better at these things than he was._

"_You know, it really is amazing that after all of these functions and events that we've gone to you still haven't learned how to tie your tie." His wife said with a smile. Howard teased her back._

"_Well I don't need to learn when someone who can do it as well as you jis ust a couple rooms over."_

_She laughed and gave her husband a quick kiss before turning back to her son._

"_Anthony!" she exclaimed exasperatedly. The little boy had taken off the jacket of his tuxedo and was now attempting to get rid of the uncomfortable vest. He had a look of utmost disgust on his face as he stomped on the jacket, ruining the meticulously ironed creases._

_Howard laughed, "Sorry dear, I think he takes after me in this regard."_

_The mother sighed, "Great, now before you know it I'll be tying both of your ties for the rest of my life."_

_Flashback ends_

Tony walked over to Pepper. His suspicions had been correct. She was holding the picture of the family before that stupid function. It was the last picture ever taken of Maria Stark.

"I never knew what she looked like." Pepper said quietly. It sounded as if she was about to cry. Tony put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped, apparently she hadn't realized he was there.

"Tony!" She glanced at the picture and quite obviously hid it behind her back. "I'm sorry Tony, I swear I was just looking for a flashlight, you know with the power being out and all and-"

"It's alright Pepper. No harm done." Tony said as easily as he could. He didn't want her to think that he was mad.

Pepper still looked worried, "Still I'm just going to go now, I can put the picture back." She turned to place the picture gently in the drawer before slamming it shut in her hurry to get away from Tony, "See you later!" She called, but before she could get out of the room, she heard Tony say something. It was too quiet for her to understand, so she turned and looked at him, waiting to see if he would speak once more or let her make her getaway.

"Wait." He said a little louder. She was surprised. Tony usually wanted to be alone with his thoughts, trapped in his solitude. He opened the drawer and pulled out the picture of his mother. The frame was custom-made…by a seven year old. It was just a few planks of wood that Tony had nailed together (most seven year olds didn't have access to power tools, but being a genius, Tony Stark did) and then painted. The pictures used to digitally change in the frame (the seven year old Tony had invented that long before it came out in stores), but after his mom had died, Tony had rewired it to be set on just the one picture. It had been a gift to his mother the Christmas before she had died.

"I can tell you the story if you like." He said to her. Pepper felt honored. Tony hardly ever shared his personal feelings. He usually liked to keep everything bottled up inside until it all exploded out of him. Maybe taking his frustrations out as Iron Man had been helping Tony with that.

"Okay." She said a bit nervously. They both walked over and sat down on the bed. They both looked at the picture in his hands. It was of three people. Howard, Tony and Maria Stark. They were walking into whatever glamerous event that they had been invited to on a red velvet carpet. Maria and Howard each held one of their son's hands. The child was grinning up at his mother with admiration and love, and the same look was reflected in Howard's eyes as he gazed upon his wife. Maria, with her stately beauty, didn't seem to notice. Her long black hair curled down to her waist, and her deep brown eyes were focused on a point up ahead of the group.

"She was beautiful." Pepper said quietly, then immediately wished that she hadn't, until Tony agreed with her.

"Yeah, she was."

_Flashback_

_As the family walked down the red carpet, Maria kept her usual tight grip on her son, as did the father. Tony, at the age of seven, had already earned a reputation for being less than thrilled with these functions, much preferring to go home and build who knows what with his dad. He was never impertinent or rude, but when asked about the events he was attending by reporters, who more or less just wanted to capture the boy genius on camera, he would always come up with some answer having to do with the money that was being spent on the event having better uses in the world (This was especially awkward at a fundraising event for a charity. His parents had stopped letting him talk to reporters after that). No one except for his parents was bold enough to criticize him for it though. Everyone knew that he was smarter at age seven than anyone else at those public outings. Except, of course, for his father._

_All eyes were drawn to Maria. Many had called her 'The Conscience of Technology', because it was greatly suspected that she had as much to do with the purposing of her husband and son's inventions as they did in making them. Besides that, she was very beautiful, and unlike so many of the celebrities attending the function, not a bit of her was artificial in any way. She always took the lead on these kinds of events, feeling that it was the family's duty to be seen when products of their invention were in so many people's homes. Howard disliked them because he felt that his work should involve science, not pleasing the public and taking requests (the number of letters requesting something to be made invariably increased after these types of ordeals. Once, someone had even asked him for self cleaning underware. Howard quickly lost patience with requests after that). Tony, too young to really understand something like 'the public' (yes, I know, he can criticize billionaires for going to glitzy restaurants just to be seen and not spending money on charities for world hunger, but he can't understand 'the public eye'? This kid was born a superhero), just disliked the uncomfortable outfits and cameras flashing all over the place. It had hurt his eyes until his father invented special contacts for him to wear that acted like sunglasses, but were invisible. Unfortunately, the boy had hated those too. He was a picky kid. However, Maria insisted they go, so the boys relented._

_As they walked down the carpet, they were stopped time after time by reporters. They all seemed to have the same questions. How was the company going? What new technologies did Stark International have in store that would soon dazzle the world? How was the young Anthony Stark? Is he as much of a genius as his father? Will he inherit the company when it comes time for Howard to retire?_

_Howard, as was his usual method, answered each question only once. That way he managed to keep him and his family from being plastered all over the magazines and such without paying people off._

_Eventually the family made their way inside and sat down at their assigned table. Unsurprisingly, they were seated next to the Stane family. Whitney Stane, daughter of one of Howard's most aggressive wannabe usurpers, instantly grinned when she saw Tony. First she ran to the boy, who, being a boy, played the 'girls have cuties!' game. Next she ran to Howard, who, though surprised, hugged her back, and last but not least, ran to Maria, who welcomed her hug with open arms. Whitney's mother had died right after she was born. Whitney was often ignored by her father, Obadiah, and Maria suspected that it was because Whitney looked like an exact copy of her mother. Maria couldn't criticize Obadiah for not being able to reconcile his feelings for his lost wife, but at the same time, she couldn't just leave Whitney out in the dust, so she had become something of a mother to Whitney over the years. Whenever they were together, Maria always paid attention to what Whitney said, no matter how trivial. She knew that all Whitney wanted was someone to talk to. Someone who would listen. Eventually, Tony took over that position in Whitney's life, but at the age of seven, it was Maria who listened to her._

_Flashback ends_

"She was a great person." Tony said quietly. Pepper nodded. Judging from the picture in Tony's hands, there was something about the way mother and son carried themselves. As if they carried the weight of the world on their shoulders, and yet bore it proudly and straight-backed. For Tony that was actually true. Pepper had always thought that it was a newly acquired trait, born of the Iron Man duties, but maybe he'd inherited it from his mom.

Pepper wanted to hear the rest. So far, she had been getting a detailed description of Tony's mom, but nothing about the actual event that led her to her untimely death. Her natural curiosity was causing her to want to ask more about it, and yet she was hesitant. Tony was sharing something incredibly personal with her. She didn't want to push him. He would just shut down again.

She need not have worried. Tony started off again. "We were at a function…"

_Flashback_

_They all sat down and prepared to eat. Tony started to fiddle around with his fork, wondering how he could turn it into one of his inventions. His mother caught sight of this, and, knowing full well what would happen if he wasn't stopped, let him be. At least it would keep him occupied and mostly silent throughout their dinner._

_Before the food came, there was a speaker. He talked about what a wonderful thing that the aristocrats of the east coast were doing by coming to support the event and such. Tony, somehow listening and reshaping his fork at the same time, mouthed some of the words that came out of the speaker's mouth as they were said with a sarcastic look on his face. The speeches at these things were so generic that Tony had memorized certain key phrases that the speakers used, and made fun of them. Whitney, much less mentally advanced than her peer, was doodling on a piece of paper. None of the adults were inclined to stop the children from goofing off._

_By the time the salads came, Maria was a little worried about what her son had made. Not only had he completely destroyed the silverware (they would have to pay for a new set), but he had somehow gotten wires and fuses, and was now hooking them up to the fork and what looked like a cell phone battery. She may not have been the physicist that her husband was, but she did know that bare wires, plus charged fuses, plus metal equaled a very bad thing. She tapped her husband on the shoulder._

"_Howard, stop our son will you?"_

_Howard took one look at his son's invention and checked his pockets. He let out a groan. "Anthony, did you steal my phone?"_

_His son nodded without hesitance. "I needed parts." He handed his father the casing of the cell phone. "Here you go."_

_Howard rolled his eyes and took a closer look at what his son was making. His eyebrows furrowed._

"_Anthony what are you making?" He asked. There was a hint of worry in his voice mixed with a certain amount of admiration._

"_I'm calling it an arc reactor, to put it simply." The boy said._

"_I see, can you explain?" The father asked._

"_Well, I'm calling it an 'arc' reactor because the electricity jumps from wire to wire, sort of like how electricity travels through nodes on a nerve cell, to make the electricity move faster, which causes it to become a closed circuit, and the wire here," he points to a disconnected wire, "will be attached to an ore of some kind, which can have power drawn from it steadily so you don't have to charge it so often, which means it has to have the capability to release energy slowly, and at the same time absorb energy almost instantaneously. The fuses are there mostly because I needed a way to regulate the power drawn from said ore and to make sure that the whole thing doesn't explode. This is just a rudimentary prototype, but you get the idea. I'm thinking that it could be used as an energy source, based on electricity. It's cheaper than gas by far, so if it could somehow be incorporated into a car…" The boy droned on and on. Howard couldn't figure out what had brought the boy to the conclusions he had, but by his own logic, the boy was building a renewable energy resource that could replace fossil fuels, _from phone parts_. Howard looked at his wife with a huge grin on his face, their son never taking his eyes off of his project. The Stanes looked at the boy's invention with interest, especially Obadiah. Howard noticed, and though he hated doing it, for he knew how important it was to the invention that his son kept working on it while the idea was fresh in his mind, he put a hand on his son's shoulder. The boy looked up, surprised._

"_Put it away, Anthony." Howard said firmly. The boy was confused. He had done such things before without it causing problems. Why this project should be any different was completely beyond him. _

_Thinking that his father was mad at him for the cell phone destruction, he stopped working, and in his best, apologetic voice he could manage, said, "I'm sorry I took your phone Dad. I can build you a new one, and I saved your memory chip and sim card so…" The boy continued, but Howard didn't want to listen anymore. He felt bad for making his son feel as if he had something to apologize for, when in fact it was Obadiah who worried him._

"_It's alright Anthony, why don't you take it out to the car, and we can work on it later?" Howard asked, not able to take the sincere, but unnecessary apologies of his son any longer._

_The boy grinned, and started to collect the project. Obadiah looked disappointed, and then amused._

"_You drove a car, here, Mr. Stark? Most of us take a limo." Obadiah asked, incredulous that his own boss could be so unmaterialistic and uncaring about the his image._

"_Of course I did Stane. I live over four miles away. I wasn't going to walk. Not in these shoes anyway. Do you know how expensive they are?" Howard drawled. Teasing Stane was a lot more fun than working with him. However, if there was one good thing to be said about Stane, it was that he got the job done, and usually before the due date. Stane was currently the project manager of the company, which Howard felt was the best place to keep an eye on him, because it gave him the most veto power over Stane._

_Stane gave a large Humph, and said no more._

"_I'll go with you Tony." Maria said. She didn't want her son speaking to any more reporters._

_Whitney, not wanting to miss a single minute of the Maria-Whitney time they shared, got up too._

"_Can I go too?" She asked politely. Maria looked at Obadiah, who hadn't even noticed that Whitney had stood._

"_It's fine with me, so long as your father is alright with it." Maria said kindly. Her son looked at his mother like she had just turned to the dark side._

_Whitney turned to her father, "Can I go Daddy?" She asked. Most little girls have their fathers wrapped around their pinky fingers. Not Whitney._

"_No." He said firmly. Whitney sat down dejectedly._

"_I'll be back soon," Maria said to her, Whitney perked up._

"_Really?" Maria nodded and Whitney smiled, and then seemed to grow suspicious, "You promise?"_

_Maria smiled, "I promise."_

"_Good."_

_With that, an impatient Tony tugged on his mother's arm and started to lead her out of the restaurant._

_Flashback ends_

"She was hit by a car." Tony whispered. It sounded like he was reliving the memory. Pepper wanted to bring him back. He looked so utterly crushed right now. She wanted the good old Tony back. Dorky, arrogant and a bit temperamental. Those were the things that made him who he was. He was also sweet, funny and the bravest person that she had ever met. She wanted Tony to come back.

With the power outage, the two of them were sitting together on his bed and he was spilling his secrets to her. He was letting her in for once. She couldn't even see his face, but she was pretty sure that it was only a few inches away. The darkness was complete, and Tony just kept on speaking into the darkness. She felt like she was connecting with Tony on a deeper level. Like for once their relationship was raw and completely vulnerable. Tony was showing her his vulnerability.

Pepper nearly threw her arms around him when she realized this. Luckily she caught herself in time, and Tony just continued.

"We were walking out to the parking lot…"

_Maria Stark refused to use the valet. She saw no reason to pay someone to go get the car when she was perfectly capable of walking there herself. She was a believer in hard work. It was one of the things that she shared with a certain Roberta Rhodes, one of her best friends since junior high. As she walked, she let her son have his hands back. The reporters were hovering around the entrance, not in the parking lot, and Tony needed his hands to carry his project. Maria sighed. Another cell phone gone. Sacrificed to science._

_The project really did seem to be spilling out of his hands though. It was amazing that all of those wires and fuses could fit inside such a tiny amount of space. The cell phone Tony had wrecked (it could have been put back together, if it wasn't for the newly stripped wires) was a small one too. Howard just had to have the latest thing._

_Maria grinned when she remembered their argument over the newly deceased cell phone. Howard had wanted to buy one, because he didn't want to spend the time building the cell phone. He had new ideas to move onto. That was all fine in Maria's opinion, but why Howard had to buy an incredibly expensive phone when he himself could build one ten times better was beyond her. She wouldn't let him buy the seventeen hundred dollar phone, so he built the same one from scratch._

"_Here Tony, let me help you." She offered her hand. Her son scowled._

"_Mom!" He said loudly. She was surprised by his reaction._

"_What is it?"_

"_I don't like being called Tony. And girls aren't supposed to carry heavy stuff like this."_

_Maria almost burst out laughing. Her son had inherited his father's innate sense of chivalry. As long as the Stark boys lived, Chivalry would never be truly dead._

_Instead, she nodded solemnly, "You're right, that is the nice thing to do, but when the girl offers to help you, then its okay to accept."_

_Her son stopped at this. "Really?" He looked up at his mother. She was amazed at how similar her husband and son's eyes were. A bright, clear blue. She loved those eyes, and was glad that her son had inherited them._

_She smiled, "Really."_

"_Well…Okay then." He said and gave some of the parts to his mother. She carried them gingerly, not wanting to bend anything. Howard had seemed truly excited about this project of his. She had been listening while Tony explained, but after a few sentences her son had started to speak a different language and it got to be way over her head._

_Suddenly, a set of brakes screeched loudly. A black SUV whipped around the corner. It caught Maria Stark in its headlights and gunned the engine._

_Acting on a mother's instinct, Maria pushed her son out of the way before herself. Thinking that she could run better if she had the momentum of her arms, she then threw the rest of her son's project over to him._

_She was too late to save herself._

_The little boy watched in horror as the car plowed into his mother. He could see everything that happened. His mother, crumpling under the force of impact, thrown over the hood and into the windshield before bouncing off and landing on the hard pavement twenty feet away._

_The boy ran to his mother. He could see that nearly her entire lower ribcage was shattered, and her arms and legs were broken in several different places. There was a large gash in his mother's head. He checked her pulse. There was none. He checked his watch. It said 9:24 P.M._

_He was smart enough to know that she died instantly. She hadn't known what had happened to her. He knew this and yet he still sobbed. He thought that she had gone without pain was supposed to bring some comfort, if not peace._

_He screamed for her to wake up, and soon he heard rapid footsteps coming up to the pair of them he threw himself over his mother possessively, not wanting anyone to disturb her._

"_Oh my God." A man said. Tony heard four beeps of a cell phone. "Yes, I'd like to call in an accident. There's a woman here. I think she might be dead. She got ran over by a car-hey stop it kid! I'm trying to save her!" And in fact, the man had been trying to push Tony out of the way so that he could perform CPR._

"_She is dead." Tony said between sobs. The man was mortified that a seven year old could possibly declare his own mother dead. "her cranium has been shattered in several places and three ribs have punctured her lungs. Her sternum was also crushed and the bone fragments most likely went through her heart. Time of Death was 9:24."_

_The man finally recognized the kid. "Oh my God," he said again, "It's Maria Stark. Her kid saw the whole thing."_

_Tony still glared at the man. He didn't like him at all. The man was intruding. It was impossible to save Maria Stark. She had sustained too many injuries to the brain, heart and lungs. She had broken nearly every bone in her body._

_But if there was one man who could save her…_

"_Go get my Dad." He ordered._

_The man, though stunned that he was following the directions of a seven year old, turned and ran into the restaurant. By now, several other people had started running over._

_Howard Stark knew that there was something wrong. He had that feeling. It was like someone had just injected him with liquid nitrogen, and his body was on fire. He was already standing when a valet sprinted in calling for him. Howard was already sprinting out to the parking lot before the man had had a chance to explain. Something was wrong with his family._

_The sight he saw gave Howard nightmares for the rest of his life. It was his son, sprawled protectively over his mother, covered in her blood. There were people that were trying to pry him away from her but the seven year old was deceptively strong. Howard ran over to try and help, but before he could do anything, he caught sight of his wife._

_His own analysis came up with the same results as Tony's. He went over to his wife's side and suddenly cried. It wasn't the wretched sobs of his son, but it was somehow sadder. It was a grown man who was broken, because his wife was gone, and there was nothing to be done. He couldn't save her. He couldn't help her in any way._

"_Oh Maria." He whispered. His son heard and stopped struggling for a moment and looked up._

"_Dad!" He sobbed. He ran to his father's arms and sobbed some more._

"_What happened?" The gaggle of onlookers all started speaking at once, until he snapped, "Enough! I was asking my son." He looked at Tony, who was still trying to calm himself enough to speak. "What happened, Anthony?"_

"_Mom, she-she pushed me out of the way, and then she threw my project, and she couldn't get out of the way! And the car went faster Dad! the car went faster when it saw us. Why did the car go faster?"_

_Howard shook his head. His son had a photographic memory. This would be imprinted on his brain for the rest of his life. "I don't know Tony, I don't know why anyone would want to hurt her."_

_And the two sat there, holding each other, sharing their grief for the person they both loved and lost until the ambulance came, and even then, the onlookers were too crushed by their grief to disturb them._

_Flashback Ends_

Pepper was in shock. She had known that Tony's mom had died, but she didn't know that he had been there, that he had witnessed it. That he had been the one to declare her dead.

Tony was still staring at the picture of his mother. Pepper knew he had finished his story. She put her hand on his. She let him know that he wasn't alone.

To her surprise, she felt him shaking. She looked closer at his face. Silent tears were streaming down his cheeks. She was shocked. He had sounded so calm before, his voice so even, almost dead. Now she realized that it had just been a ruse.

"Oh Tony," She whispered. She felt awful for having felt pleasure in this initially. Sure, it was great that Tony finally trusted her with this, but it wasn't worth the consequences. All it had done is drudge up old emotions, leaving her friend raw. She hugged him, though she was careful not to get between him and the picture. He was still staring at it. He seemed mesmerized by it.

But to her surprise, when she started to pull away from the hug, not feeling that it was doing any good, his arm suddenly wrapped around her and she heard the soft thud of the picture frame on the bed as Tony's other arm wrapped around her in a bone crushing hug. She held onto him as tightly as she could.

"Thanks for listening Pepper." He said quietly. There was emotion in his voice again. It was alive.

"I was happy to." She whispered back. When they broke apart, she stood, and Tony lay back on the bed.

"You're the first person I ever told that story to." He said. There was a note of amazement in his voice.

Pepper was stunned. "Really?"

He nodded, "Yeah, I mean, Rhodey knows what happened, but you're the only person I've told it to in detail before. Other than my dad, that is, but I don't think that counts."

Pepper cocked her head to the side, "Why not?"

He sat up on his elbows, "Because he was suffering from his own grief. I think it helps to talk with people who are going through the same thing, but it's not the same as sharing with someone entirely new. It feels…I don't know, different than it did talking to my dad."

Pepper shrugged, "Maybe that's because he was a part of the incident and I wasn't"

He sighed, "I guess we'll never know."

She shook her head, "Probably not."

Pepper was sleeping over that night. The power had been out for two weeks at her house, so the heating wasn't on and it was starting to get cold at night. Tony was going to try and fix the power outage from his lab tomorrow. Rhodey was out and about as War Machine, in an attempt to give Tony a break as Iron Man.

Pepper was staying the night in Tony's room, and so he insisted that she have the bed. She obliged, reluctantly, seeing as he had had such a rough night. The guy at least deserved to sleep in his own bed, but he insisted. He slept on the floor with a sleeping bag. The whole thing seemed rather silly to her. Why she couldn't sleep in the sleeping bag was completely beyond her, but then she remembered how Tony had been arguing with his mom about who would carry the parts to his project right before she was hit. Chivalry was just innate for Tony. He had to save people. He had to protect them with everything he had.

That reminded her….

"You invented your implant when you were seven?" She asked. They had both gone to bed, and she kind of hoped that he wasn't awake, because she regretted saying anything. She didn't want to bring all of those feelings back again.

But to her dismay, a sleepy "Pretty much." Came out of the darkness. She decided to go with it.

"But I thought Dr. Yinsen-"

"I consulted with Dr. Yinsen when I needed to know how much electricity I could use on the implant. It affected the ore type I used. I gave the plans for the arc reactor to him because I needed him to calibrate it with the body's natural electrical impulses."

She shook her head in disbelief. Even half asleep he could still talk tech. Nerd. She didn't have time to think about this, however, because soon she was gone. Drifting off into a dreamless slumber.

That night, Tony dreamed about the past.

It had been about five days since the accident. The Starks' initial assumptions about Maria's injuries had been proven completely accurate with the autopsy. Right down to the sternum shattering and puncturing her heart.

Cause of death was determined as blunt force trauma to the head. Tony disagreed with the medical examiner, pointing out that the car crushed her side first, breaking nearly every bone in the right side of her body, including shattering her sternum, which would have sent sharp projectiles into her heart and lungs, instantly killing her. The two of them actually got into a fight. Howard, of course was there to stop them, but he himself was shattered. While his son responded to the crisis with anger, lashing out at anyone and everyone, Howard closed in on himself. He shut down. He truly scolded Tony for the first time in months (he really was well behaved most of the time) and then led him out.

Roberta Rhodes was creating a law suit if they ever found the guy. The car that had run Maria over didn't have plates (Tony had informed them of this, but in the hope that he had missed it, Howard had checked anyways), which meant that it was probably intentional, though why anyone would want to kill Maria was beyond anyone's understanding. She wasn't the heir to any money. Her family was actually pretty poor. And Howard wouldn't need to kill to get money he already had, so upon seeing the obvious grief the man had, the police didn't suspect him, as was so often the case in these kinds of events.

Howard had a theory.

They hadn't been after his wife. They had been after his son. Heir to a fortune and a multimillion dollar company. Howard kept this theory to himself though. He didn't want Tony to think it was his fault.

At the funeral, which was supposed to be private, the paparazzi showed up. Tony, who had been laying a flower on his mother's casket, spotted them and raced toward them in a fit of rage, screaming that they had killed her, and that it was Princess Diana all over again and how dare they come here, not to mention that it was illegal. His accusations were so fervent that he got some of his extended family and friends riled up. The paparazzi, rightfully feeling guilty, ran off. Some people (including Tony) started to chase after them, but Howard stopped them.

"Sit. Back. Down." He told everyone. The anger in his voice was so badly concealed that everyone immediately went back to their seats. Howard Stark did not get angry often.

He turned to his son. "Why did you do that?"

Tony looked back up to his father with betrayal and hurt in his eyes, "What they were doing was illegal. I helped stop them."

Howard shook his head, "You can't just write your own rules though. That's what we have the law for."

Tony was confused, "But what they were doing was illeagal too! And besides, I'm allowed to protest. It's in the first Bill of Rights."

"Protest? Yes. Mob? No. You were starting a mob just now."

Tony's eyes widened. "But I made the paparazzi go away."

Howard nodded. "Yes, but it could have been handled better."

His eyebrows puckered and Howard's heart ached. Tony looked exactly like his mom when he did that. "How?"

Howard smiled, "By talking it out calmly, and without letting your anger get in the way of the talking."

Tony still looked confused. Howard tried to think of a better way to explain it, and then shook his head. They were needed back at the funeral. "Next time you have a fit of rage like that, just point whatever it is that's got you so angry out to me, and I'll show you."

The boy ran up to his room and slammed the door behind him. Howard sighed and started to go upstairs to try and calm him. It had been ten weeks since the accident, but as he reached the top, Howard noticed that his son was crying again. Howard leaned against the door and listened to his son. There were loud thuds that seemed to be aimed at the door. He wondered if Tony knew that he was on the other side.

Then he heard a sniffle, and a pair of young feet shuffle over to the door. Howard heard him stop, and then a few seconds later, he threw something into the garbage can with a loud scream of rage. Howard sighed. A seven year old shouldn't have that much anger in him. Maybe he shouldn't have taught him so much about the world.

Howard knocked gently on the door. There was a pause in the noise, and then he heard the sound of small feet coming towards the door. It opened a crack to reveal one bright blue eye staring warily at him.

"Can I come in?" He asked. The eye looked away for a moment and then the door opened widely.

Howard stepped in. Like usual, the room was a mess. Tony was very similar to Howard in many ways. He looked at his son. "What were you doing in here? I heard banging."

Tony pointed at the garbage can. Howard took a look. It was the arc reactor that Tony had been building at dinner the night of the accident.

Howard picked it up and studied it. It had truly been one of his son's best ideas. It even topped most, if not all, of his own inventions. "Now why would you throw this away?" he asked.

"It got Mom killed." He said. And then ran to his private bathroom and locked the door. Soft sounds of sobbing came from inside.

Howard was in shock. His son thought that he had invented a weapon of some sort. After all of Howard's lectures about using their genius to better the world, Howard could see how his son could feel that he had invented a weapon, and had felt that he had killed his own mother. It was absolutely ludicrous, of course, but for all his brains, Tony was still a seven year old, and he tended to blame himself when things went wrong.

Tony was blaming himself for his mom's death.

Howard walked over to the bathroom and knocked. "Anthony?"

The sobs stopped for a moment, and a weak "yeah?" drifted through the door.

"You didn't invent a weapon, Tony; it's a very good idea. Your arc reactor didn't kill Mom."

The sobs continued, but the boy spoke in between breaths, "No, I know it's not a weapon. It could probably be used for a great purpose, except there are two problems." Tony stopped speaking.

"And what are those?" Howard asked, realizing that he needed to pry the information out of his son.

"I know it's not a weapon, but by building it, I killed mom. She had to walk me out to the car to drop it off and make sure I didn't talk to any other reporters. She didn't want me to embarrass you. Second, I don't know of any kind of ore that could sustain the power needed to keep it going. Vibranium won't work because that absorbs kinetic energy, and to sustain power I would need an ore that absorbs electro-static energy. I don't think that ore exists, unless you know of one that I don't."

Howard was taken off guard. The first reason his son had stated had been so emotional and so self-loathing, and in the same breath he had become completely detached and started talking about problems with the mechanics. Well at least the Princess Diana comment at the funeral had finally been explained. He had been wondering about that one. Tony blamed the reporters for Maria having come with him to the car.

Tony thought he had killed his mom.

"Tony open the door." Howard said quietly. It wasn't an order, and Tony knew it too, but sure enough, the door opened.

"I don't like being called Tony." He whispered.

"Sorry." Howard said, crouching down to his son's height. "Anthony, you didn't kill mom."

The little boy's already red eyes brimmed with tears. Howard had no idea how he was going to convince his son that he hadn't killed his mom. Tony was…stubborn and quite honestly, he didn't get it from Howard. Not to mention that Tony was the type of kid who would take blame for everything, even if it wasn't his fault. Like his mom's death. He needed to have someone to blame, and he chose himself.

He held up the arc reactor. "This is an amazing piece of technology. If you ever get inspiration like this, don't stop yourself. Just go with it. And besides. If anyone is to blame for Mom's death it should be the car's driver, definitely not you. And you know what? Your mom went with you to the car because she wanted to protect you from the reporters. She wasn't trying to save my reputation. She just didn't want you to talk to those reporters because, well, sometimes that big brain of yours scares people. It's not your fault, of course, but because you're special, people will always treat you differently."

Tony looked down at his shoes. "Special is just another word for different."

Howard shrugged, "It doesn't matter because both are good. How boring would the world be if people were all the same?"

Tony cocked his head and looked up and to his right. It was always his pose when he was thinking.

"Well, speaking on a cellular level, humans all share a similar DNA sequencing pattern which includes our cell make up, and since cells are all based on one design that every cell must have to survive, doesn't that mean that we are all the same?"

Howard sighed. Raising a genius was no easy task, "I mean on the inside."

Tony looked more confused than ever, "But we're even more similar on the inside than on the outside-"

"Feelings, Anthony, I'm talking about feelings. And brains, and certain physical features that distinguish us from other people."

Tony's eyebrows puckered in confusion before relaxing. "Like love?"

His father nodded, "Like love."

"Love is a chemical called serotonin induced in the brain when our brains establish a strong positive connection to someone."

Howard sighed. Just when he thought he was getting somewhere…

"Yes, that's true, but love is also an emotion. Humans can't live without it. It's a natural craving that goes back to when humans were primates. We need to be a part of something to feel whole."

The boy nodded. Why his father didn't just come out and say that was beyond him.

He looked at his shoes. "Dad?"

"Yes Anthony?"

"If I didn't kill Mom, does that mean you don't hate me?"

Howard was too surprised at this question to answer at first.

"No, Anthony, I never hated you, not once. You're my son. How could I hate you? I love you."

Tony threw open the bathroom door and ran into his father's arms.

Howard quietly patted his back as the child sobbed. "It's alright kiddo. It's alright."

"Except for Mom." Tony corrected.

Howard nodded, "Except for Mom."

Sixteen months later, Tony was eight years old, almost nine. With time, he had healed somewhat. The pain wasn't so fresh, and life had started to move forward. This happened imperceptibly, until one day when Tony and his father were going to a function together. It was to be the first one since Maria had died.

Tony was getting ready in his room. He had matured a lot on the past few months. He no longer complained about these types of things. He had learned to accept them as they come, and dodge them whenever possible. His anger over losing his mom had subsided, and been buried deep within himself. Sometimes that fury could still be seen when he let his guard down. It was too much pain for an eight year old to know.

Howard stepped into the bedroom. "How are we doing Anthony?" He asked. Tony had dressed himself well, but he was off by a button or two on his jacket. Howard knew better than to even try and tame his son's messy hair. That was just how he was. Howard wasn't going to waste time on it. No matter how much gel, combing or trimming the boy got, the hair never looked presentable. Tony was the real-life version of Harry Potter. All he needed was a trip to Hogwarts and he would be set.

"Who tied your tie?" Tony, or Anthony, as Howard had learned to call him, said with a bit of surprise in his voice.

Howard looked at his son in confusion. "I did. Who else?"

Tony stared at the perfectly tied bow-tie. "I guess I don't know. Mom always used to…"

Howard knew what had surprised his son now. It was one of the first tangible markers that life was moving on without Maria. Tony hadn't realized that life was changing again.

"We keep going Anthony. We can't stop, otherwise we'll fall."

Tony looked at his father with too serious an eye for an eight year old. "I know."

Howard nodded, a bit surprised at the easiness that his son had accepted that. He was getting better at understanding figurative language. He turned to walk out the door, but his son stopped him.

"Hey Dad?" He called. Immediately Howard stopped and turned around expectantly.

"Can…Can you call me Tony from now on?"

Howard was surprised, "What about that being a baby name?"

Tony shook his head. "I think I like Tony better than Anthony. It sounds more normal."

Howard nodded. What Tony had stated was only half the truth. The other half was that Maria used to call him Tony. He wanted to be reminded of his mom. He didn't want to forget her.

"Of course Tony. We can do that." Howard checked his watch. "Now come on or we're going to be late."

And they both hurried out the door.

When they returned home that night, Tony immediately ran upstairs and into his bedroom, or more specifically, to his dresser.

He hadn't told his dad that he had kept it, but Tony rummaged around on the bottom drawer until he found what he was looking for: The unfinished prototype of the arc reactor.

Cradling it under his arm carefully, he walked over to his desk and pulled out some sheets of paper and started drawing. He drew an entirely finished prototype of his arc reactor, and then the instructions for how to make it, including pictures of how it should look. If any normal eight year old had tried to draw directions for future generations, it would have been illegible. But Tony, being Tony, had some of the neatest handwriting in Stark International.

It was nearly one in the morning when he finished it. When he was done, he snuck down the stairs and outside to throw his prototype in the neighbors dumpster. He didn't want his dad to see that he had kept it for so long.

He ran back upstairs and shoved all of the papers into a large manila folder. It was too bad that he couldn't patent his idea. It would tip off his dad.

Before he put the envelope in his desk, he stared at it for a minute.

"I promise mom, I won't forget you. The rest of the world might, but I won't. And to prove it, I'm never going to let someone use my arc reactor technology. Ever."

The little boy put the envelope back into his desk and went to bed.

Tony woke up. Everything hurt. Why was it so bright? Where was Dad? Where was he?

Then he remembered. That bright white light, coming through the vent. His gauntlet just barely putting up a shield in time. Waking up on the ground thousands of feet below where he should be. Crawling towards his armor. Ordering it just before he passed out to take him to Rhodey…

Rhodey. Was he with Rhodey? He looked around. There was someone he recognized standing close to him. It was…

"Dr. Yinsen!" He said. The man was looking at Tony dubiously. Yinsen was the head of the medical department at Stark International, and an old friend of the family.

"Tony don't strain yourself! You have extensive damage to your heart. We're barely able to keep you alive as it is. Right now you're on the bypass machine, but we don't know how long it will last. There's a lot of damage to your chest."

Tony looked down and became nauseous at the sight of his own mangled flesh. Yinsen handed him a bucket.

Tony looked around the room some more. There was another doctor, whom he did not recognize, and Rhodey, at the far end of the bed.

"How ya' feeling man?" He asked.

Tony grinned. "Never better."

Dr. Yinsen frowned, "I seriously doubt that." He muttered, perhaps a little louder than intended.

"So how does it look?" Tony asked seriously. Yinsen shook his head.

"I don't know Tony. I don't know how you managed to get to Mr. Rhodes here, all the way out from Jersey, where the plane crashed, and I don't know how you survived the crash in the first place. All I know is that you're here, barely alive, and I don't know how to fix you."

Tony held out his hand. "If you don't mind, could I take a look?"

Yinsen handed over the chart without hesitation. He knew that Tony was smarter than he would ever be, and he was more than happy to let the teenage prodigy show off if it meant that he lived.

Tony read it, and instantly knew what would work to fix his heart.

It would save his life.

The only problem was, it would break his promise.

"Rhodey?" Tony asked. Rhodey looked confused.

"Yeah?"

"Do you remember about that thing I told you about a while back?"

Rhodey stared at him a minute, and then understood. "Yeah. I remember." He said in the most solemn of voices.

"Should I use it?"

He nodded, "Your mom would want you to live."

Tony didn't need any more debate than that.

"Dr. Yinsen, a long time ago, I invented something called the arc reactor. It wasn't intended for medicinal purposes, but for this case, it should work."

"Arc reactor…I've never heard of it. When did you invent this again?"

"I was seven. It was never patented. Anyways, the arc reactor acts like a magnet to the things inside it. If I could counteract the sinking of the shrapnel with the magnetic field, I could stop the shrapnel from sinking in any further. I could keep them exactly where they are. And besides that, I could keep my heart beating with an electric pulse for every beat. It's not at all the use it was intended for, but I think it's probably my only chance, so when you build the prototype, wake me up again and I'll show you how to put it in."

Dr. Yinsen looked hopeful for a moment, and then downcast. "But wouldn't the constant electrical pulses be like torture to you?"

"Not if you sever the nerves that the pulses would go through."

Dr. Yinsen nodded, looking determined. "Well where can we find a prototype?"

Tony blushed a little. "I made one when I was younger, but I threw it out a year later and wrote the plans out instead."

"I see, and, where can we find these plans?"

Tony looked at his best friend. "Rhodey knows."

Rhodey nodded. "Follow me."

They started to walk out the door before Tony called to them. "Hey wait, hold on!"

They popped back into the room, both looking at him expectantly. "You need a special ore. The plans aren't complete. When you make the prototype that I'm giving you the plans for, you need to use Dianum. It's very rare, but I'm pretty sure my dad has some up here. Otherwise you have to go to the south pole, and if that happens, I'm doomed, because I'm not going to make it for more than a week." He paused while Yinsen and Rhodey took the news, "Speaking of which, where's my dad?"

The doctor and his friend both had looks of anguish and fear on their faces. "Tony, your dad never…he's gone. I'm sorry man." Rhodey finally told him.

For the first time that day, Tony felt fear.

"Oh." Was all he could say. His dad hadn't survived. Of course his dad hadn't survived, he hadn't had a frickin' suit of armor! Why didn't he help him? Why hadn't Tony even gone to _look_ for his father?

"Tony," Rhodey said, looking at his best friend. They were practically brothers. Even more so now that they would be living together, he remembered from his father's will. "It isn't your fault. You survived. By some cruel twist of fate, he didn't. It's not because you left him there. It's because the plane blew up. End of story."

Rhodey knew him well, Tony thought sarcastically. He wanted to rip out the bypass machine's cords. He didn't deserve to live. Howard Stark should be lying here, not his son. Tony was too young to be alone. He would do anything to get his father back.

"Dr. Yinsen?" Rhodey called down the hall. "I think you need to sedate him."

Yinsen took one look at Tony and agreed. He pumped the morphine into his system via the IV. Slowly, he began to black out. He smiled. He could have a lot more morphine than most people, considering his heart was already dead. Maybe with enough morphine, the pain would go away.

And then the worst realization of all.

He didn't want it to.

Because if it did, he wouldn't remember how to feel.

He was too used to the pain.

And he didn't think he could learn to live without it again.

After all, he had had pain since he was seven years old.

Tony sat bolt upright in the sleeping bag. He shook his head. It had been such a weird dream. It had been so…vivid.

"Just a dream. Just a dream," He muttered to himself.

Pepper rolled over. "Tony? You alright?" She asked sleepily.

"Yeah, just a nightmare, that's all. Go back to sleep." He ordered.

"You want to talk about it?" She asked. He smiled into the darkness. He was glad he had told Pepper. It felt so good to have someone to confide in.

And then he realized something. He didn't feel...pain. Maybe he was really learning to live without it.

"Sure."

*****Author's Note: So if anyone didn't get that last bit, I was attempting to show how messed up Tony is, and how he's learning to cope with his pain now, and move on, and how important it was for him to share himself with Pepper. Yeah, i guess it got a little into 'Pepperony' towards the end didn't it? Anyways, tell me what you think! I want to know!*****


End file.
